


Resignation

by AnnaOnTheMoon



Category: Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: #PicardNeedsBev, #PicardShow, Admiral Beverly, F/M, Retirement, Romulans, Spoilers, admiral picard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaOnTheMoon/pseuds/AnnaOnTheMoon
Summary: The rescue mission to Romulus is not going how the Admirals Picard thought it should. They make decisions about their future and a new person enters their lives.





	Resignation

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, "spoilers" for Picard based on a leaked character sheet and other things we know.

Beverly breezed into her quarters and her hands immediately tugged off her lab coat and she flung it across the room.

“Bad day, my love?”  Jean-Luc was instantly at her back, pressing a glass of wine into her hands and gently rubbing her neck with his strong hands.  Beverly took a moment to enjoy the feel of his hands before she turned around to face him.  “Sorry.  It’s just so frustrating!”

“I know. I never thought our hands would be so tied in this  matter when I said I wanted to rescue them.”  Beverly placed a gentle kiss against his lips. “Not your fault.” 

“How many orphans?”  Beverly sighed and looked away. 

“ _Beverly_. Please.” 

“You don’t want to know.  Deanna and her team are trying to find relatives for some of the children, but since Command insisted we only rescue children, elderly, and otherwise unable to fend for themselves first, we have a lot of children without parents.  And who does Starfleet expect will look after these children?  Do they even _have_ a plan?   What’s the point!  Rescue the Romulan children so they can be raised as part of the Federation, so they can have their own culture erased.  Turn them into good little citizens of the Federation.  Makes me want to quit.”  Jean-Luc contemplated his wife’s words. Truthfully, there was a lot about this rescue mission _he_ didn’t like either. 

“Are you serious?”  Beverly turned to look at her husband and began removing the pips from her collar – two solid bars of Admiral pips offered to her after years of heading Starfleet Medical and captaining her own ship.  Years she and Jean-Luc continued to spend apart.  She tossed them onto the desk where they made a pinging noise.

“No. Yes. Maybe!”  She raked her fingers through her hair and then became frustrated when her fingers tangled in the chignon she had worn that day.  Jean-Luc gently tugged her fingers free and pulled the pins out of her hair, adding them to the desk.  He ran his own fingers through her hair briefly, before leaning in and tenderly kissing her. 

He moved his own hands to his collar and carefully removed his own Admiral pips, placing them next to his wife’s.  “Maybe we _should_ leave.”

“Now who’s being serious?”  Beverly strode towards the bedroom to continue to remove her uniform, tossing each item into the clothes refresher.  Jean-Luc paused in the doorway to admire his wife’s back.

“I’m  not happy with how this is being handled, either, Beverly.  And you raise a good point about these children being raised in the Federation without their culture.  How did they handle Arvada?”  Beverly frowned and headed into the bathroom, turning on the shower and calling back to him.

“Not very well.”  Jean-Luc’s uniform joined hers in the refresher and he followed her into the bathroom and stepped into the shower behind her.

“Since we were a Federation colony, they assumed we had no culture of our own.  Nana brought me to Caldos and we tried to continue some of the practices we started on Arvada – mostly growing the herbs for medicinal purposes, but the Federation didn’t do anything to help us.  In fact, we were probably lucky Nana had been able to grab as many of her cuttings as she could.  We weren’t actually _in_ the danger zone, but we were being herded out of there as quickly as possible.”  Beverly reached for the shampoo bottle and began to work it through her hair until Jean-Luc pushed her fingers aside to lather her hair himself.  She sighed happily and closed her eyes.  Even after all this time, she still revelled in his touch. 

“Did everyone get rescued?” 

“I’m not sure.  I was only twelve, so I don’t really remember much.  I think I tried to block it out.  Of course, Nana was evacuated in the first group with me because of her age and because she was a healer. We’d have to try to find records to see what happened to everyone, but I know the Federation sealed the reports.”  Beverly turned to rinse off her hair and caught the dark look  that fell across Jean-Luc’s face. “They’re planning on doing that here, too, aren’t they?”

“Yes.  I’ve been given the orders to have our system scrubbed of all information related to this rescue and to ensure nothing _unnecessary_ remains.”  Beverly frowned as she swapped places with Jean-Luc under the hot spray.

“They’ll want my medical files, won’t they?” 

“Afraid so.  Everything is to be sent to the central database and nothing will remain behind.”  Beverly smacked the tiled wall in frustration. 

“So, _no_ medical records for these people.  _No_ records of their names, their occupations, their families...”  Jean-Luc shook his head sadly.

“None.”  Beverly’s eyes blazed in anger. 

“It’s not right, Jean-Luc.” 

“No, it’s not.”  He let the spray sooth his neck muscles for another minute before offering to swap positions with Beverly once more.  She nodded and reached for a sponge and her bodywash.

“What are we going to do?” 

“I don’t know.  We...follow orders...what else can we do?”  

“What happens if we leave? For real, not just mildly speculating.  What if we called up Nechayev and Jellico and told them in no uncertain terms we were both resigning our commissions effective immediately.”  She scrubbed at her body vigorously as she became more and more enraged.  Jean-Luc caught her hand in his and gently took the sponge off her and began to gently wash her instead. 

“I suppose...we become civilians. We go home.  We....well, _I_ could finally figure out the family wine making business.  If you wanted to continue to practice medicine I’m sure the doctor in La Barre would take you on...or hell, you could run your own practice.  Plenty of space in the vineyard.  Or you could continue your research.  I bet we could convert one of the barns into lab space.” 

“Oh, that’s nice,” Beverly murmured as Jean-Luc gently ran the cloth over her.  “I’d love to continue with my research.  Only problem is, if there’s no Starfleet, what would I do with my research?” 

“Your parents were independent scientists.” 

“They worked _for Starfleet_ though.”  Beverly reached behind and turned off the water while Jean-Luc handed her a fluffy towel. “On the other hand, it would be nice to be home.  Rene wouldn’t have to stay at boarding school if he didn’t want to.”  Jean-Luc smiled at the mention of their son.  He was fourteen, and every bit the spitting image of himself when he was a boy. 

“I do miss him.” 

“I know.  So...are we doing this?”  Beverly waved her hands around the room. 

“I think we are.  Besides, I’m getting _old_.  When this mission is over...we leave.  No fanfare.  No awards ceremonies or retirement dinners. We simply tell them we quit.”  Beverly grinned.

“I like that idea.”

###

“Beverly?”  Jean-Luc entered their shared quarters after yet another pointless meeting about how th rescue mission was going.  He could hear a baby crying somewhere in the background and wondered if Beverly was speaking with Wesley over the comms and if their granddaughter was crying in the background.  Beverly surprised him by coming out of the bedroom with a toddler on her hip who continued to cry.  “Er, who’s this?”

“This is K’Bar.  His parents are dead and he has no other relatives that we can find.  And he’s....well, he’s a little attached to me.” 

“I see.”  Jean-Luc reached for the child who immediately wrapped his arms around Jean-Luc’s neck and buried his head against his shoulder.  His thumb went into his mouth, but he ceased crying.  Jean-Luc gently stroked the child’s back and Beverly smiled as she watched K’Bar’s eyes slide shut. 

“Looks like he’s attached to you, too.”

“Hmm.”  Jean-Luc carefully carried the child over to the sofa and gently laid him down.  The boy whimpered slightly, but Jean-Luc ran a finger gently down his face and he calmed once more.  He turned to his wife and eyed her suspiciously.  “Why do I get the feeling, you’re about to ask me something?”  She smiled sweetly.

“I want to adopt him.  I want _us_ to adopt him.”  Jean-Luc’s eyebrows went up.

“We can’t adopt them all, you know.”  Beverly wrapped her arms around Jean-Luc from behind and pressed herself against him.

“I know.  But K’Bar....Jean-Luc, he doesn’t have anyone.  I found him wandering around the camp, crying with a dirty diaper.  No one would look after him. So I took him to the medical tent, cleaned him up, got him fed, and....”  Jean-Luc chuckled. 

“Alright, if this is what you want.  I suppose we still have most of Rene’s baby things at home.”  Beverly grinned and turned Jean-Luc around.  She squeezed his hands.

“Really? Just like that?”

“Really.  Just like that.  I don’t think K’Bar will suffer as we can educate him about his Romulan heritage  as he grows up.”

“ K’Bar Picard.”  Beverly wrinkled her nose. “Sounds a bit silly.” 

“Mm, Romulans don’t have second names. Not really, as far as I can tell. They have a clan name,  but when we enrol K’Bar in school, he’ll have to use Picard.”  Beverly nodded and moved over to the desk. “You  have the paperwork done already, I take it?” 

“Just need you to sign them, Papa!”  Jean-Luc rolled his eyes but accepted the PADD from his wife and added his thumb print. 

“Command is going to have a _field day_ with this.  Two prominent  well-decorated Starfleet Admirals adopting a Romulan child.” 

“Ah, but two soon-to-be- _resigned_ prominent well-decorated Starfleet Admirals.”

“ _Touché”._

###

“This is absurd!”  Admiral Alynna Nechayev threw the PADD she was handed down on her desk and glared at Admiral Ed Jellico.  “The Picards _can’t_ adopt a Romulan child! What’s that going to look like?  Two of the highest decorated Admirals in Starfleet with a traitorous Romulan for a child?!” 

“It gets worse, Alynna.”

“It can’t possibly be any worse, Ed.”  Edward Jellico pointed to the PADD.

“Keep reading.”  Nechayev’s face went from red to purple as she continued to read. 

“Resigning their commissions? _Resigning their commissions?_ Oh no. No. No. No. No NO.  I don’t _think_ so, Admiral Picard....” Jellico shook his head.

“You can’t actually prevent the man from retiring, Alynna.”

“Oh, he’ll be back.”  Alynna’s eyes glinted. “Trust me.  This won’t have been the last of Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> The new Picard info has me pretty excited and writing. Maybe I'll finish my other projects. who knows? haha no, I will. Anyway. just a note to say that K'Bar is mentioned in a leaked character sheet as a "young Romulan who is devoted to Picard", so I thought I'd make up a reason.


End file.
